Robert Downey Jr

Robert Downey Jr

Today we’re looking at Chart Patterns, a really interesting way to look at how your planets are grouped in your chart.

What are Chart Patterns

They are seven arrangements or patterns the planets form within the circle. We call them bundle, bowl, seesaw, bucket, splash, locomotive and splay.

Marc Edmund Jonesfirst described these patterns in the 40s, associating them with distinct personality types (in natal charts) and prognostic indicators (in transit, progressed, returns or horary charts). Let’s stick with natal charts for now and play with this a little.

What to Count

Only the ten planets are considered in determining the chart pattern. Leave out the Nodes, POF, asteroids, trans-Pluto etc. to get to the core pattern. If you add too many elements, everyone becomes a Splash!

Seesaw - Planets occupy two opposing areas of the chart. Focus is on binary opposites requiring objectivity, awareness and balance.

Examples of Chart Patterns

For the discussion, look at your chart, discover the pattern and think about what it might mean to the focus you have you in your life. What lights you up, how you approach your aims and goals, what has the most importance?

The Bucket

Let’s look at a few different chart patterns and what they might say about the personality type. Will Smith, with a BUCKET chart pattern, is a great example of a person of intense focus. He came from ‘nothing’, built his life from the ground up, and has a work ethic that would impress Saturn. Clearly it does impress Saturn! Check out some of his core value statements:

I strive to be like the greatest people who have ever lived. – Will Smith

I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation. -Will Smith

Stop letting people who do so little for you control so much of your mind, feelings and emotions. Will Smith

Can you see from his Chart Pattern ONLY why he might have this level of focus and determination?

Check the “handle” of the Bucket. What does that say?

The Locomotive

Another Libra, and a wonderful example of the LOCOMOTIVE Chart Patter is Ursula K. Le Guin.

She’s a powerful woman, born in a time when gender equality was not the norm. She’s dared to be different in her craft and in her life, excelling at taking her forward thinking ideas (Uranus) and bringing it into a tangible form for others to enjoy (Saturn). Note the “engine” and the “caboose” of her Locomotive.

My imagination makes me human, and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it. - Ursual K Le Guin

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow. - Ursula K Le Guin

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. - Ursula K Le Guin

See Saw Chart Pattern

Check out Robert Downey Jr’s SEW SAW Pattern. The focus is powerfully placed in the occupied houses, and there can be a constant contrast and opposition.

Where do you think his oppositions would come from? How might they be integrated, or do they always remain “either/or”?

If I could eat whatever I wanted every day, I would have Domino’s pizza with pasta carbonara inside every slice. And at night, I would have Neapolitan ice cream until I felt absolutely toxic. And then I would drift off telling myself, ‘It’s going to be O.K… It’s going to be O.K. you’re going to train in the morning.' -Robert Downey Jr

I guess the issue for me is to keep things dynamic. -Robert Downey Jr

Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That’s hard enough. -Robert Downey Jr